


Sailing Paper Boats

by AirgiodSLV



Category: The Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-19
Updated: 2006-02-19
Packaged: 2019-07-20 11:34:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16136399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirgiodSLV/pseuds/AirgiodSLV
Summary: They both watched for a while as the yacht made its merry way across the creek towards Billy, and then Dom frowned. “You’ve never made a paper boat before?”Elijah shook his head, still watching the yacht as it got stuck just off the bank and Billy had to reel it in with a long stick. Dom was momentarily horrified at the state of America’s youth. “It’s a tradition,” he proclaimed. “All boys make paper boats, and then they sail them in creeks. It’s what boys do.”





	Sailing Paper Boats

**Author's Note:**

> For [](https://xsquotessuch.livejournal.com/profile)[xsquotessuch](https://xsquotessuch.livejournal.com/), for the [](https://with-love-fic.livejournal.com/profile)[with_love_fic](https://with-love-fic.livejournal.com/) challenge. Thanks to [](https://impasto.livejournal.com/profile)[impasto](https://impasto.livejournal.com/) for the beta, and [](https://shellies.livejournal.com/profile)[shellies](https://shellies.livejournal.com/) for letting me pick this up.

Dom was the first to think of it, on a hot Tuesday afternoon when there was really nothing else to do. There was a creek running almost directly through the movie set, wide enough across that you had to cross by the bridge a few yards down, and Billy was scratching through the dirt looking for things of interest when Dom came up with the idea.

“What are you doing?” Billy asked, as Dom crouched down on the bank, holding a crumpled piece of paper that must have blown away from the set days ago, dirty and yellowed from the sun.

Dom folded one corner over, then another. “I’m making a boat,” he explained, smoothing down the creases until he had a crudely-shaped canoe. He set it in the water and gave it a little push, and it bobbed just out of range of his hands before stopping. Billy helpfully poked it with his stick, and then they watched it for a minute or so as it traveled gamely across the nearly-still surface of the water.

“I’d better go get it,” Billy said when the boat nudged up against the far bank, and trotted off towards the bridge while Dom watched the boat. After another minute he saw Billy arrive and pluck the boat out of the water.

“Wait!” Dom called, and waving his arm to gain Billy’s attention. “Send it back, I want to try something else!”

Billy nearly obliged, but hesitated a moment after he set the boat down. Dom saw him fiddling with something, and then the paper canoe was bobbing its way slowly back across to him, and Billy was running back to the bridge.

Billy arrived a few seconds before the boat did, and they both watched together as the small craft bumped up against the bank. There was now a stick mast poking up out of the boat, leaning crookedly to one side and making the boat list slightly with its weight.

Dom scratched his nose contemplatively. “This has possibilities,” he said.

 

 

Elijah wandered down on the second day, bored and for once not sleeping. Dom was putting the final touches on his yacht, which didn’t resemble a yacht so much as a kayak, but it was the thought that counted. Billy was waiting on the other side, sitting on a tarp to keep his costume clean, hobbit feet propped up on his pullover.

“What are you doing?” Elijah asked curiously.

Dom eyed his yacht critically to make sure it was waterproof. “Making boats,” he announced. “This one’s a yacht.”

Elijah looked dubious, but didn’t challenge his assertion. “It’s made of paper,” he commented, eyes on the boat.

“Yeah,” Dom agreed, looking the yacht over one more time. He couldn’t remember whether yachts had masts or not. He didn’t think so.

“So it’ll sink,” Elijah pointed out, taking a seat beside Dom on the tarp.

“No it won’t,” Dom assured him, and set the craft onto the water to prove his point. “It’s not going that far.” They both watched for a while as the yacht made its merry way across the creek towards Billy, and then Dom frowned. “You’ve never made a paper boat before?”

Elijah shook his head, still watching the yacht as it got stuck just off the bank and Billy had to reel it in with a long stick. Dom was momentarily horrified at the state of America’s youth. “It’s a tradition,” he proclaimed. “All boys make paper boats, and then they sail them in creeks. It’s what boys do.”

“I never did,” Elijah replied, and then added, “But I never really had a creek, either.”

Dom made a disapproving noise that was meant to convey his opinions on child actors growing up in Hollywood, and leaned back onto his elbows. Elijah crossed his legs and played with a stick.

“What happens now?” Elijah asked finally, when Dom made no move to do anything else.

“Billy sends it back,” Dom explained. “Then I send it again.”

“Hmm,” Elijah commented. “Seems kind of pointless.”

But he didn’t leave, and when Billy’s boat arrived at the shore taking on water, he was the one who ran for more paper.

 

 

It was well past noon. Usually – almost always, to be fair – Peter was good about their schedule, and no one was kept waiting for long. But this was a movie set, and there were a lot of things that could and did go wrong, so it wasn’t too shocking that they hadn’t been called to set yet. Elijah had, half an hour ago or more, so it was just Billy and Dom again, making and sailing boats.

Dom found that while he enjoyed the meditative silence, he missed being able to have a conversation with Billy. This bothered him for all of five minutes, until he was folding his next boat, tongue stuck between his teeth in concentration, and had another brilliant idea.

Tearing off a strip of paper from the bow, he picked up the pen Elijah had left sitting on top of his script and wrote carefully, _I want a sandwich._

He tucked the message into the prow where Billy would be sure to see it, and shoved off.

Eight or nine minutes later – they were building new boats every time now, so it was taking longer between sailing expeditions – Billy’s boat made it to shore, and Dom plucked the scrap of paper out of the canoe (it might have been another yacht, Dom wasn’t altogether sure) to read in Billy’s neat print: _Tuna fish._

Dom’s next boat was a fishing vessel. He drew lines on the paper net and made sure to write _Dolphin safe_ on both sides.

Billy sent back a full catch of tiny paper fish, and there was a shark fin drawn on the side. Inside the hold, the message said, _Shark-fin soup?_

Dom wrote his opinions on shark finning in very small, concise print, and sent the letter back on the deck of a Coast Guard vessel ready to catch any ship of Billy’s fleet doing illegal and anti-environmental things.

From his side of the creek, he could hear Billy’s laugh.

 

 

Their boats were improving dramatically. Already they had sailed recognizable schooners, motorboats, and one unfortunate cruise liner which was cobbled together out of about twenty sheets of paper and fell apart within seconds of touching water. Dom fished the soggy remains of his boat out of the creek and sent something simple across with a succinct _Bugger it_ while he tried to figure out how to make it work. Billy sent back _Tough luck, it’ll work next time_ in a rescue vessel searching for the lost passengers, and Dom cheered up immensely.

They were gaining attention from the rest of the cast as well, after four days of boat-building and being conspicuously absent from the set whenever they weren’t needed. Sean Bean was oddly enough the one to make Dom’s second cruise liner seaworthy, and the both agreed while working on it that paper boat-crafting was something every boy ought to have done at least once during his childhood, and that American children just weren’t raised right.

Some idiot had given Orlando a stopwatch, and he raced back and forth across the bridge timing their boats, calling out the numbers like an Olympic official. It was amusing for a while, but Orlando didn’t have any patience for the boat-building process – which was really the whole point – so their peace was disturbed on both sides by a healthy amount of impatient nagging. Sometime during this process Elijah also settled back beside Dom, biting his non-existent nails and asking occasional questions.

“Aren’t you wasting a lot of paper?” he asked doubtfully, and Dom gave him a disgruntled look before shaking the pilfered recycling box at his side pointedly.

“Script rewrites, revised schedules, memos,” he listed off the contents, and Elijah peered into the box and looked troubled, eyebrows drawing together.

He was quiet for all of thirty seconds before asking, “Won’t the ink come off in the water and pollute the creek?”

There was excited Elven yelling from the far shore, and momentarily Billy’s boat bumped against Dom’s bank. The folded message inside read, _Please get rid of Orlando._

Dom smiled grimly and wrote back, _Only if you can get rid of Elijah_ covertly before sending another boat across.

Billy’s next boat was christened the _H.M.S. Flipper_ , and her captain was a paper cutout of a boy with enormous pen-drawn googly-eyes. Elijah gave Dom a wounded look and retreated to the set. Dom couldn’t think of an equally creative way to chase off Orlando, so he just sent Viggo, which sure enough did the trick.

Viggo took up residence for awhile on Billy’s side of the creek, and Dom didn’t know what he was doing over there until a hobbit-sized canoe bobbed across the water, with rough wooden carvings of two figures sitting inside, whittled into recognizable form and helpfully labeled _Merry_ and _Pippin_ with paper nametags strung around their necks in Billy’s handwriting.

Dom had trouble swallowing around the unexpected lump in his throat, and set that boat aside to keep.

 

 

After a week, everyone knew. The crew made bits of sailing equipment out of whatever scraps were lying around handy, the cast drew people and marine animals and flags of their own countries – which turned out to be quite a few, although Dom’s personal favourite was the skull-and-crossbones pirate flag – and Dom and Billy became boat-building connoisseurs. There was no mistaking Dom’s yachts now, and the masts on Billy’s sailing ships were straight and tall.

The best part, of course, was sending messages, which Elijah completely failed to understand – “Why don’t you just call or text him?” – but Dom still got a thrill from opening each folded scrap of paper, and reading Billy’s tidy rows of words.

It was as if they had more license for free speech somehow, like the anonymity of writing something down and sending it masked their identity. It was still Billy, of course, which meant that Dom could tell him things, the most personal things he hadn’t mentioned to anyone else, thoughts and observations and confessions which he knew Billy would be able to understand. But it was easier when it was like this, when he didn’t have to say things directly to Billy’s face and wait holding his breath for a reaction.

One evening they actually went back to the creek after Peter called it a night, hobbit foot-free and in near-darkness, because they’d been having a conversation too important for Dom to leave until the morning and he didn’t have the courage to say things out loud yet. He poured it all onto paper, until the light faded completely and they couldn’t read anymore, and then Billy came over and gave him a hug, and they walked back to their cars in silence.

The next day, Dom took his heart in his hands and wrote _the_ message, the one he’d been trying to find a way to write almost since this whole paper boat thing began. He sent it across in their canoe, the one he’d saved, and waited for endless minutes while he tried not to fidget for a response.

It never came. Instead, he found Billy on his side of their creek, holding the piece of paper and smiling. Dom took a deep breath in relief just for that look, for the smile that said everything was all right, no matter how Billy responded.

“You didn’t send a message,” he said, mouth dry and eyes not quite meeting Billy’s.

“I thought you might want me to answer this one in person,” Billy replied, and Dom slowly smiled.


End file.
